Sixteen to nineteen year-old boys. A dribbling mess, allegedly, of testosterone and sordid obsessions. If you were forced to write a list of words describing 16-19 year-old boys, chances are ‘asexual’ would come quite far down the page, somewhere round the level of ‘incredibly tidy’.
And yet, purveyors of stock clichés take note – Japanese youths are a different story. According to a recent government survey, 36% of Japanese males in this age range proclaim little or no interest in sex.
Many, in fact, confess an active aversion. Moreover, it appears that this perplexing trend is being replicated across the population.
Japan has an infamously low birth rate. In 2010 only 7.41 babies were born per 1000 of the population, making the UK look fruitful with our 12.34.
Problematically, Japan also has one of the highest life expectancies in the world. Whether they have their childlessness to thank for that, addled parents elsewhere can only guess. The important point is that an ageing population poses a demographic dilemma, with a low worker to pensioner ratio unbalancing the economy. On that basis, it is disquieting to hear of their distaste for the basic mechanism of reproduction.
The survey, which is conducted every two years, quizzed 1,301 men and women about their lifestyles. As compared to the 2008 survey, there was a marked drop in stated levels of sexual desire. 18% of men, in total, claimed not to care about sex, or to dislike it, up from 10% in 2008. 41% of married people had not had any in the last month, a rise of nearly a third since 2004.
Is this change a discrepancy thrown up by a small sample size, or does it run deeper than that? Certainly, it seems that the figures add clout to a common observation. For some time now, cultural commentators have been remarking on the ‘sexlessness’ running rampant in Japan.
Young people are believed to be starting families later due to work and financial pressures. Married people are put off sex because of tiredness, or because it’s ‘too much trouble’. According to Kunio Kitamura, head of the clinic of the Japan Family Planning Association which took part in the survey, “The findings seem to reflect the increasing shallowness of human relations in today’s busy society.”
Meanwhile, the new breed of chaste young men, who sound about as alien to Western ears as a new breed of somersaulting hedgehogs, have been dubbed ‘herbivorous’ by the media.
The survey did not indicate whether they also defied the stereotype about never tidying their rooms.
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So which country has the highest birth rates at the moment? And is there a general positive or negative association? I guess in the developed world some people now have careers before kids. At the end of the day I guess it’s time, money and conraception